Capital Offensive

“Anything is possible,” Price agreed, turning away from the screen. “Homeland Security, DOD, he’s obviously a government agent.”

“Yeah,” Schwarz muttered, stroking his mustache. “The question is, which government?” The defunct KGB had been particularly fond of this trick, along with MI-5 in the United Kingdom and the Mossad.

“The guard could have been working for anybody,” Lyons said, typing at another miniature keyboard set in the table and accessing a duplicate of the reports. He quickly flipped through the electronic documents. Nothing, nothing and even more nothing.

Just then, the intercom buzzed softly.

“Price,” the mission controller answered brusquely, touching a switch.

“Bear, here,” a gruff voice replied over the speaker. “My team just pulled in something hot.”

“Excellent,” Price said. “Send it over.”

A moment later there came a soft hum from the table and a document extruded from the printer under the table. When it dropped free, she picked it up and briefly scanned the message. Then she paused and read it again, slowly and more thoroughly.

“It seems that the real owner of the warehouse is the DOD,” she announced, sailing the sheet across the table. “And according to these top-secret inventory records, the Quonset hut was packed to the rafters with defunct electronics from the cold war. Mostly obsolete inertial guidance systems for ICBMs.”

“Son of a bitch,” Blancanales said, snatching up the sheet to read the report. “That’s what used to steer our long-range missiles before we switched to GPS navigation, right?”

“Before we switched to using GPS,” Schwarz said in a monotone, “an intercontinental ballistic missile was a hideously complex and staggeringly sophisticated piece of military ordnance. But not the warheads, of course. Atomic bombs were relatively easy to make. Slap two semicritical pieces of enriched uranium together and they exploded.”

No, the difficult part was delivering the warhead on target, and on time, through the enemy defenses, halfway around the world, without having it veer off and explode in friendly territory. The trick was guidance.

The Pentagon had tried a lot of solutions to the problem, some of them quite bizarre, but in the end, the inertial guidance system proved to be the only viable solution to steering an ICBM at the time. Anchored by gyroscopes, and with fantastically detailed relays, an INS device could precisely deliver a two-story-tall ICBM anywhere with deadly accuracy. However, an inertial guidance system was hideously expensive to manufacture, almost a million dollars a piece, and each unit took nearly six months to construct. Even with computer automation. It was simply that complex a piece of equipment.

During the Reagan administration, the Pentagon had decided to scrap the INS and use the much cheaper GPS. A collection of telecommunication satellites had been launched around the world and placed in stable orbits in specific points above the spinning Earth. The satellites transmitted a complex code and could be read on a receiver to give your precise location on the ground. A civilian model of a receiver would give your location within ten yards, a commercial model within two yards. A military model was dead-on, bull’s-eye accurate. Twenty years ago, the very existence of the GPS network had been beyond top secret. Nowadays, a person could buy a GPS device from the local electronics store to take on the family camping trip, and most of the better luxury cars came with the devices installed at the factory. It was commonplace. Ordinary. Mundane. There wasn’t a plane, train, ship, submarine, missile or long-range weapon system in the world that didn’t use the Global Positioning System as an aid to navigation.

“I thought the GPS network was untouchable,” Price said suspiciously, “the access codes mathematically impossible to break.”

“So did I.” Schwarz sighed deeply. “But I guess these folks found a way. Some new approach, or technique, that we never thought of.”

“Barb, you’d better call Hal and have him inform the President,” Lyons stated brusquely. “The military is down to laser-guided weapons, dead-head rockets and heat-seekers for defense until further notice.”

“All of them short-range weapons and pretty damn useless at stopping an incoming ICBM.”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

Without further comment, Price went to a phone on the wall and started punching buttons.

“Okay, if the saboteurs—or rather, the hackers—hit the warehouse before they stole the missiles,” Blancanales said slowly, narrowing his gaze, “that means they’re afraid we might fix this before a real war starts.”

“Which certainly seems to be their goal,” Lyons noted.

“Agreed. This seems to say that time is critical to them.”

“Then we just have to move faster,” Schwarz added somberly.

Deep in thought, Blancanales pulled in a long breath and let it out slowly. “Gadgets, any idea how long it might take for Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make replacement units?”

“I’m sure the templates are still in storage somewhere,” the man said hesitantly. “Unless they were also in the warehouse. But even if they have to work from scratch, I’d estimate three months, maybe only two.”

“No better than that?” Price demanded unhappily, hanging up the receiver.

Schwarz shrugged. “Hey, it used to take six months to build the things, and the very first model took years to perfect.”

“All right, inertial guidance systems are expensive, rare and delicate,” Lyons said, looking upward to stare at the featureless ceiling. “So let’s use that to our advantage.”

“What do you mean?” Price asked, reclaiming her chair.

“If we had more inertial guidance units, our ICBMs would be safe and the terrorists would be out of business.”

Slowly, her face lit up. “So we make more of them. Hundreds more. On paper.”

“Exactly. Then when the terrorists attack the fake warehouse,” Lyons said, “we grab a few alive and twist the location of their base out of them.”

“And how they’re doing it,” Schwarz added, gesturing with a finger. “That’s paramount.”

“Agreed.”

Price said nothing. She could image what would be involved in the process. Able Team wouldn’t torture a prisoner for information, no matter how badly it was needed, but there were a lot of ways a man could be forced to talk. Including letting him escape and following him back to his base of operations. However, that was used only when the situation was truly desperate. Sometimes, the “rabbit” would simply run, staying far away from his comrades. But then, nothing was certain in life except death.

Tapping on the intercom, Price said, “Bear?”

“Yeah?” the man replied.

“We need you to create a virtual warehouse full of INS devices,” Price told him.

“What for?” Kurtzman growled over the speaker. “Oh, I get it. A trap. Sure. Where do you want it located? I know of a DOD warehouse in Columbus, Ohio, where we store nonsensitive documents. Easy enough to switch the inventory to guidance systems…no, that would be much too close. The warehouse has to be as far away as possible, but still on American soil.”

“Good point. How about Puerto Rico?” Blancanales suggested, leaning forward in his chair. “I know for a fact that the U.S. government already has several long-term storage facilities on the island.”

“Sounds fine,” Kurtzman replied.

“As soon as you have the fake warehouse filed, I’ll pull Phoenix Force off their inspection and have them order the technicians at the silo to prepare the other missiles for an emergency retrofit,” Price said. “Then they’ll take a standard military transport to Puerto Rico, requisition a cargo truck and drive off into the jungle, with a return flight scheduled for an hour.”

“Why not helicopters?”

“The winds are too strong in some of the more remote valleys,” she answered. “Besides, trucks are slower. Which gives the terrorists time to stage an ambush. So choose someplace appropriate, Aaron. Far from civilians.”

“With plenty of combat room. I understand. No problem,” the man replied, and the intercom clicked silent.

“How can we be sure the terrorists find out in time?” Blancanales asked, furrowing his brow.

“How did they learn about the first warehouse?” Price countered, typing on the keyboard. “Now, I want you three in Sonora, ASAP. These people would be fools not to have somebody watching the ruined warehouse to see who we send to investigate.” She smiled coldly. “That’s why I didn’t send Phoenix Force there first. Make them sweat a little. Nervous people make mistakes.”

“If I was any more nervous I’d need a change of underwear,” Schwarz quipped.

“Again?” Blancanales retorted.

Ignoring the banter, Lyons pulled a .357 Magnum Colt Python from behind his back and swung out the cylinder to check the load. He closed the gun with a firm click. “How soon can Jack be ready to fly us down to Texas?”

“He’s warming up a C-130 Hercules at Dulles right now,” Price replied, looking up from the keyboard. “Your equipment van is already being loaded. And a blacksuit has a helicopter on the front lawn waiting for you. Find me somebody, and burn the rope.”

Stoically, the three members of Able Team rose from the table, gathered their personal belongings and headed for the door.

“Move fast on this,” Price ordered in dismissal. “The numbers are already falling. You have no idea how close we came to the end of everything last night.”

But the men were already gone, the armored door swinging closed behind them.

“Good luck,” the mission controller added softly, returning to her typing. For a long while, the only sounds in the War Room were the soft patting of her strong fingers and the steady ticking of the mechanical clock mounted on the concrete wall.

CHAPTER THREE

Panama Canal, Panama

As the thick steel gates of the lock began to swing aside, the colossal Pennsylvania loomed in the opening, dominating everything with its sheer size.

“Back off!” the harbor master screamed into a radio microphone. The man was bent over a twinkling console in the control room of Lock Command. “Veer starboard! I said starboard, not port, you fool!”

But the American oil tanker continued irrevocably onward, the ship’s computer totally confused by the conflicting information it was receiving from the channel markers and the GPS network. On the bridge of the Pennsylvania, the frantic captain was attempting to seize manual control of the huge vessel, but before he could, it was too late.

In a horrible groan of crushing steel, the prow of the ship crumpled against the open lock of the canal. The seams split, internal pipes burst and a tidal wave of thick, black crude oil gushed from the ship to spread across the surface of the water. The captain finally achieved control of his misguided vessel and applied full reverse, but driven by inertia, the million-ton tanker kept moving, sparks flying from metal grinding against metal. The bright spray touched the black torrent and the oil whoofed into flames. Rapidly, the fire spread across the water to lap against the walls of the open lock and spill into the next compartment of the waterway.

Still moving in the wrong direction, the wounded hull of the shuddering American tanker continued to yawn, the rush of oil dramatically increasing. Caught in the black deluge, a tugboat was capsized and several other ships became engulfed by the pool of fire—a Mexican fishing trawler, an Australian yacht and a gunboat of the Brazilian navy. The sails of the yacht instantly burst into flames, as did the nets of the trawler. With nowhere else to run, the crews took refuge from the conflagration belowdecks, but only minutes later their wooden hulls caught fire and men began to shriek.

Lurching into action, the Brazilian gunboat rushed to offer assistance. Sailors helped sailors; that was the rule of the sea. But, blinded by the dense smoke, the warcraft rammed directly into the trawler. The weakened hull splintered apart, exposing the vulnerable fuel tanks. As the oil fire reached inside, the gasoline lines caught like fuses, drawing the deadly blaze to the main fuel tanks.

Trapped between two of the locks, the Pennsylvania completely blocked the passageway as the crude oil continued to pour out, the internal safeties overwhelmed by the sheer amount of damage done to the crippled hull.

Standing along the side of the canal, behind an iron pipe safety railing, was a huge crowd of horrified civilians. The majestic passing of the international ships through the locks was always a big tourist attraction. Cameras flashed and cell phones took endless pictures of the mounting disaster.

In a thundering blast, the trawler exploded, the flying engine parts hammering holes in the gunboat, the oil flames seeping inside, spreading along the metal decks toward the ammunition lockers. Retardant foam gushed from the ceiling, and men dived forward to shut water-tight hatches, but it wasn’t enough and the writhing flames reached the stores of munitions, washing across the missiles, shells and depth charges. For a single heartbeat it seemed that nothing would happen, then the Brazilian gunboat vanished inside a massive fireball, the deadly halo of shrapnel tearing the yacht into splinters, and riddling the hull of the Pennsylvania to actually increase the flow of crude oil into the beleaguered lock.

Behind the railing, a hundred tourists fell as bloody lumps, their shattered bodies torn to pieces, the arms and legs gone. The few wounded survivors began to scream for their lives. But the flashing of their cameras and cell phones never seemed to stop.

Bitter smoke was everywhere, Klaxons rang like gongs, sirens howled and the primary pumps for all of the other locks automatically shut down, closing the vital canal to all traffic until further notice.

Lujan, Argentina

W ITH HEAVY TIRES HUMMING on the smooth roadway beneath the APC, a group of armed soldiers sat along the metal walls in cushioned jump seats, smoking and laughing. Suddenly there was a soft chime and a soldier opened a laptop to read the incoming e-mail. It took a few moments for the software to decode the garbled message.

“Good news, sir,” the soldier announced in grim satisfaction. “We just took out the Panama Canal.”

“Excellent,” General Rolf Calvano replied without any warmth or feeling about the matter.

Staring out a viewport, the grizzled veteran watched the seemingly endless mob of fat civilians pass by the armored personnel carrier. The sheet of bulletproof Lexan plastic didn’t distort the view in any way. More’s the pity, he thought. It wasn’t even market day and the noisy crowd completely choked the wide thoroughfare, spilling off the sidewalks and filling the streets.

As the APC stopped at a crosswalk, a dozen eager hands tried the handles, attempting to get inside to the passengers. But the driver of the military vehicle simply moved onward, the feeble attempts yielding nothing but frustration and the occasional bruised foot. In spite of its tremendous bulk, the APC was sporting slippers, rubber cushions, on the treads to prevent damage to the paved city streets, and also to any idiotic civilians.

Shouting loudly, everybody in the stores and along the sidewalks was offering items for sale. Scowling darkly, General Calvano felt distaste rise within him like the rank, sour bile that heralded vomiting.

“Too many people,” he muttered. Food prices were becoming ridiculous, gasoline outrageous. There were housing shortages, and away from Buenos Aires, at least once a week the electricity went down. Not enough generators, not enough power lines, not enough cars, trucks, farms….

Like rats trapped in a cage, humanity was breeding itself to death. The truth was in every newspaper, every broadcast, on the Web, floating in the air. Overpopulation threatened the stability of the entire world, and when the end came it wouldn’t be pretty. Natural resources were running short. The Americans were already embroiled in a war for oil. Soon, it would be for cropland. Worldwide rationing would follow, then food riots, civilians fighting one another like ants over scraps, and finally would come the ultimate horror of cannibalism.

The general grimaced at the very word. Cannibalism, the single, filthiest sin that it was possible to commit. To eat the flesh of your own kind was blasphemy beyond any salvation.

In spite of iron self-control, General Calvano shivered in remembrance of the bitter cold of that horrible month spent in the Andes, a young recruit trapped with his platoon in a cave by the unexpected avalanche. When the supplies ran out, the soldiers were forced to eat their boots, paperback books, anything possible. But as the slow days passed in an interminable march toward starvation, at last, straws had been drawn, and the killing commenced. At first a man voluntarily took his life, dying so that the others might live. But then it became a contest of the strongest, the meanest, and the true nature of Man had been brutally revealed to the young private in hellish clarity. Men were beasts, merely another form of animal, and would always revert to their base feral nature when it became a matter of survival.

As the foul memory welled, the general tried to block the taste, vaguely of pork, more like chicken. Acid flooded his gut at the horrid recollection, and he forced away the dark thoughts, denying their very existence. He alone had walked from the cave when a warm rain had finally melted away the blockage of deadly snow. He survived to walk a hundred miles through the barren hills until finding an isolated village and taking refuge near the blazing forge of the local blacksmith. As the teenager lay shivering on the dirty floor, his plan to save the world had been born. It had been crude, simplistic, but over the long years, the youth had become a man, and the plan had also grown in complexity and sophistication until it blossomed into fruition. Those American ICBMs had only been the first step toward salvation.

“Just too many people,” Calvano whispered, the words thick with hatred.

The corporal driving the APC paid no attention to the mutterings of his commanding officer. As did the other soldiers riding in the rear. Brand-new FN-2000 assault rifles lay across their laps, the 40 mm grenade launchers slung beneath the barrels loaded with AP rounds and ready to be released at a moment’s notice. They were the chosen elite, the personal guards for the leader of Forge.

Normally, officers in the Argentine army didn’t have bodyguards, but then the 67th Battalion wasn’t a normal unit, nor was Firebase Alpha. Once the soldiers had been told the truth, they eagerly joined Forge, and now worked for the general, the man who would become the unwanted savior of humanity.

Turning a corner, the APC nearly clipped a parked taxicab. The snoozing driver came to with a jerk and started to curse and wave a fist. The general knew that there was little chance of his losing a fare from the profanity. There were so many people, but everybody was walking. Cabs were expensive, while God had made feet for free.

If there really was a God, Calvano noted sourly, which he highly doubted. Enough prayers had been said over the centuries, and there had never been a reply.

Among the people thronging the sidewalks, Calvano noted drug deals happening, and instinctively reached for the 9 mm Bersa pistol holstered at his side. Then stayed his hand.

Not yet. But soon, the general noted. However, he marked the face of the traitor for later extermination along with the rest of the vermin and filth.

In a passing alleyway, Calvano saw a fat prostitute on her knees, servicing a grinning customer in the reeking shadows, garbage strewed on the ground around them. Disgusting. A professional soldier, the general wasn’t a prude, and very much in favor of recreational sex. He had a wife in Rosario and a mistress in Chivilcoy. But only the wife had been allowed to have children. After that, the general had gotten himself a vasectomy. The very minor surgery was virtually unheard of by the macho men of his backward country, and Calvano had been forced to fly to Canada.

Both of the children had been girls, which was fine with the general. Calvano wasn’t a sexist like so many of his brethren. Argentine culture was an odd mixture of Spanish pride and German rigidity, along with a certain fine madness mixed into the gene pool from the tropical paradise they lived in, and were slowly paving under with concrete and asphalt. But his little girls were fine, safe with their mother in his farm to the north, far, oh so very far away from the coming apocalypse.

As the limo stopped at an intersection, a starving man in rags appeared and started to wash the prow of the APC with a squeegee dipped into a bucket of soapy water. Normally it would have been done to the glass windshield of a car, but the man diligently washed the armor while smiling with a gap-toothed grin.

Not just an old cloth, the general noted sourly. This poor man’s job was to clean the dust from passing vehicles. He had found a way to survive. For that he applauded the man’s ingenuity, even though he hated his very existence.

“Sir, should I…” the driver asked hesitantly, pulling a wad of brightly colored pesos from his shirt pocket.

“Drive on,” the general commanded brusquely. “Give him nothing.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver replied, tucking the money away.

As the light changed, the APC surged forward, leaving the frustrated old man behind shouting obscenities and waving the squeegee in a threatening manner.

The sight made the general deeply sad. Calvano remembered when Argentina had been a beautiful land. The air and water had been clean, and crimes were few because justice had been swift. But the nation had started crumbling when the fat fool Peron and his wife took control, and was nearly bankrupt when they left. And the Americans had written a musical about the stupid bitch! he thought derisively.

Now there were homeless people living in cardboard boxes and under bridges. Crime was out of control, and food was becoming almost too expensive to buy. Only gasoline, made right there, was plentiful and cheap. A mixed blessing, as the smog was getting worse every year, even out on the ranch-lands of the wide pampas. And smog brought lung disease, which meant more sick people, more hospitals, more taxes….

As the APC left the town, the roadway became clear of traffic and the driver dutifully increased speed until the lush green countryside was flashing past the military vehicle. Fresh, clean air came in through the louvered vents, and the soldiers joked about the lack of taste as they breathed in deeply.

Lost in his own thoughts, the somber general didn’t join in the casual banter. Air pollution, water pollution…humanity was a cancer, eating itself alive, choking on the waste products and wondering what had gone wrong. Numbers didn’t lie. World population was over six billion! India and China each had a billion, and soon so would other nations. In a high-secret report, the general had read about the S2 in Brazil acually rounding up their homeless people and machine-gunning them to death in warehouses late at night to try to curb the runaway poverty. Too many people and not enough jobs.

But population control wasn’t the answer. New food technologies weren’t the answer. Oh, no. Only the general seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. One man could live in a telephone booth, but not two, and certainly not five, ten…twenty…There were just too many people in the world. Unfettered and out of control. There was only one solution. Radical surgery. Amputation of the surplus population. There were six billion people in the world, so kill five to save one billion. The numbers were harsh and unforgiving, but acceptable. A soldier’s burden.

Once, long ago, when fighting Communists from Chile trying to invade Argentina, Calvano had stationed a troop of men to hold a bridge at any cost while the rest of his battalion retreated to safety. A hundred men assigned to die so that a thousand could live. On paper it sounds like nothing. But he had looked directly into the faces of those brave men, those soldiers, when he told them to stay and die. And they had done as ordered. They stood the line and did their job, which saved the battalion. How could he do any less?